This Year in History:
2013
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
By 2013, Netflix had already fundamentally changed the way Americans consumed movies and television. The service offered unlimited DVD rentals—and, starting in 2007, direct streaming of many of its titles—for…
On February 28, 2013, less than three weeks after making the unexpected announcement that he would step down, 85‑year‑old Pope Benedict XVI officially resigns. Citing advanced age as the reason…
On April 4, 2013, one of America’s best‑known and most influential movie critics, Roger Ebert, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun‑Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years,…
Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, dies in London at age 87 from a stroke on April 8, 2013. Serving from 1979 to 1990, Thatcher…
On April 15, 2013, two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days…
On May 6, 2013, three women are rescued from a Cleveland, Ohio, house where they had been imprisoned for many years by their abductor, 52‑year‑old Ariel Castro, an unemployed bus…
On June 6, 2013, Americans learned that their government was spying broadly on its own people. That’s when The Guardian and The Washington Post published the first of a series…
On June 19, 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series “The Sopranos,” which debuted in 1999…
On June 23, 2013, 34‑year‑old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.…
Outraged and saddened after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed a Black teenager in 2012, Oakland, California resident Alicia Garza posts a message on Facebook on July…
Weighing in at a healthy 8 pounds, 6 ounces, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (more informally known as Prince William and Kate Middleton), is born…
On September 2, 2013, 64‑year‑old Diana Nyad becomes the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection. Nyad completed the 110‑mile…
On September 16, 2013, a 34‑year‑old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12 people and wounding several others over the course of an…
On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela, the former activist who overcame a nearly three‑decade prison stint to become president of South Africa, passes away after years of struggling with health…
